T R I N I T Y. I N. S A N. F R A N C I S C O. P R O G R A M

The following feature story appeared in the campus publication MOSAIC in September, 1999.  Although some courses, students, and faculty members referenced in the story may have changed, it still provides a full and accurate picture of the Trinity in San Francisco program.  For the most current course information and faculty listing, we encourage you to visit the program's homepage.

Exploring the origins, life, and art of an urban environment

With the historic and centrally located Bransten House as their residence and classroom building, and the city as their living library and laboratory, Trinity students last spring launched the inaugural semester of the Trinity-in-San Francisco program, along with several students from other colleges. According to the program’s director, Associate Professor of Theater Studies M. Joshua Karter, the pilot program represents "the integration of residential and academic environments." It offers students opportunities to explore the variety of urban existence, including the immigration patterns of the region, the relationship between art and the community, and the built environment of a carefully planned city.

Shared experiences and independent work

The San Francisco program’s unusual and flexible schedule alternates between shared experiences for students — five interdisciplinary seminar courses, internships or independent study, weekly lectures and theater performances, and discretionary time for individual excursions. Karter says that the program is ideal for sophomore students who would like to take one semester to explore a variety of inter-related perspectives before specializing in the junior and senior years. The courses in the program, which are taught by Karter and four adjunct faculty members based in the San Francisco Bay area, were designed both to capitalize on the resources of the city and to appeal to a cross section of students.

Harmony L. Hansen ’01, a women’s studies major and spring semester participant, notes that students in her group came from different majors and learned a lot from each other. She says, "I’ve gained a respect for points of view that aren’t my own and an understanding of them." Moreover, the fact that students not only studied together but also lived together meant that academic discussions flourished both day and night. Students, says Hansen, couldn’t "just walk away from it after a 50-minute class."

Tyler W. O’Brien ’01, an English major, found the "Urban Environment" seminar to be his favorite. In one assignment, students did a photojournal project in which they found, photographed, and wrote about a street that was well planned and compared it to a street that was less ideal. Their analysis was based on specified criteria that included the scale and proportion of the buildings on the street and the physical comfort of the pedestrian. (Shady trees on one side of the street and open sun on the other, for example, make it a good walking street in different kinds of weather.) O’Brien says that the project made him realize "that things have been done intentionally, and that they can be done well."

Internships and community research

Program participants are required to do an independent project for course credit, often devising projects of personal interest that also count toward their majors. In his project, political science major Jordan M. Silver ’01 examined community opposition to the development of a 9,000-square-foot chain drugstore in the vintage, small-scale North Beach neighborhood. On his research forays into the city, Silver located newspaper archives from 1997, accessed the city planning department’s files, and met with activists to analyze why the their resistance efforts were successful. After participating in Trinity’s Cities Program, in which he and other select incoming students examined cities from a variety of humanities and social science perspectives, Silver applied to the Trinity-in-San Francisco program because of his interest in urban design and desire "to learn about how another city worked."

Some students combine their independent projects with internships. Harmony Hansen worked at an HMO where she developed a survey for 150 people who participated in a domestic violence prevention program at their workplace. Her interest was to determine whether what participants learn is affected by their gender. She points out that billions of dollars are spent annually on such prevention programs, but to date there has been little indication that the programs work. Having studied feminist theories at Trinity, she says it was a revelation to view the issue from the perspectives of a corporation and the health care industry, where prevention is not just a moral or social issue, but a bottom-line imperative.

With a public relations-focused internship at the San Francisco Film Festival, Tyler O’Brien did a project that required research of the city’s more than 200 annual film festivals. He believes that the San Francisco program, in particular the opportunities presented by internships, gives students a chance to meet "regular" people with different insights about life in a city.

Other settings for learning

In addition to the seminar classes and self-directed work, students participate in weekly theater excursions, which expose them to San Francisco’s avant-garde theater scene. Harmony Hansen says performances they saw helped students develop a critical and discriminating eye. "It has given me a lens with which to examine theater that I never possessed before," she says.

Students also attend Monday night lectures at Bransten House. Associate Professor of Sociology Stephen M. Valocchi and Assistant Professor of Music Lise Waxer were among the guest speakers last spring, as were a variety of experts from the San Francisco community. A political scientist from Stanford University discussed desegregation in the city, for example, while the founder of a local preservation and restoration firm spoke about the rehabilitation of historic structures, and an official from the San Francisco Department of Public Health spoke on issues of long-term health care. Trinity alumni in the Bay area are invited to the lectures, which might, in the future, be expanded into a civic issues forum, open to the general public. Karter says that would be "a way to give something back to the community."

With the successful completion of its first semester, Trinity-in-San Francisco has enrolled 20 students this fall and seems to have wide appeal. Tyler O’Brien believes the program offers students an urban immersion experience that is markedly different from and complements their experience on Trinity’s Hartford campus. As a result of direct engagement with issues ranging from social protest to urban development to homelessness, he says, "My view of the world has changed immensely. I’m going to take away a lot."

-Leslie Virostek